


Ink Stains on My Sheets

by shadowycorner



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Freedom, Friendship/Love, Getting Back Together, Loneliness, Romance, Trauma, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25186729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowycorner/pseuds/shadowycorner
Summary: Shortly after the war, Hermione can't stop running. She doesn't want to be found, but there's one person who won't stop looking.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Ink Stains on My Sheets

**Author's Note:**

> This was made for a challenge on a different site. It's about traveling and my love for it, and how sometimes getting lost is the only way to find yourself.

There used to be ink stains on his sheets, but now the sheets were clean.  
  
  
The sweet scent of fresh laundry hung in the air, drowning out the scent of her, as if she were never even there.

Ron stared at the blank wall instead of at the outline of Hermione’s shoulder in the dark. He remembered how her face used to be concealed by curls and her breathing steady for once, in those depths of late night, when the studying and writing and eventual love-making would exhaust her to the point where nightmares couldn’t find her.  
  
  
The world was stitching itself back together after the war, but not Hermione. Not even pausing to breathe and face her demons, Hermione was charging full steam ahead.

In addition to helping with Hogwarts restoration and attending the many trials and funerals, she had decided to study and sit for her N.E.W.T.s. It was a thing she had vowed to fulfil if she ever got out of the war alive.  
  
  
She hadn’t been allowed to board at Hogwarts because she was now overage. She only went there to use the library and take examinations. That in itself was a blessing, because she could stay at the flat Harry and Ron were renting together up above Diagon Alley.  
  
  
She could crumple the sheets, drip ink all over them when doing assignments in his bed, and sigh his name later than late at night.  
  
  
His selfish bliss from finally having her there next to him overwhelmed him so much that he never noticed how she was in a constant state of running.  
  
  
One day, her N.E.W.T.s were done, and he had fallen in love so badly he reeked of it. Somewhere around there, his flat and bedroom were suddenly not enough room for her to run.  
  
  
Australia came up. And she wanted to go alone, without him, which wounded him but he understood that perhaps it was something she needed to do.  
  
  
“I’ll be right here,” he had said, “and when that is resolved, we can have everything, a proper happy life, together, maybe with some family down the line. You’re what I want forever.”  
  
  
He had blurted it all out, spontaneously and maybe too fast, but he had felt she’d like to know.  
  
  
She had nodded, kissed him and cried. And without a word of response, she had left.  
  
  
That’s when it occurred to him, that maybe he was wrong.  
  


* * *

  
  
She walked from the dentist’s office straight to the beach, feeling sick and hardly seeing because of the falling tears.  
  
  
Her parents were safe. Not only that, they were doing great, radiating a sense of calm. To them she was just a patient with an accent like theirs, asking questions that were maybe a bit too personal, but they humoured her and answered.  
  
  
They had dogs now, instead of a daughter. They loved their new country of residence and talked of how after what they only vaguely remembered as years of worrying and anxiety, all they felt now was a newly found joy for life.  
  
  
Hermione reached the seaside and sat down into the sand. With breaths coming out quick and shallow, she took off her shoes, bore her feet into the hot sand and let the wind from the ocean sweep over her.  
  
  
Her parents, different people now, might as well be dead dead dead to her.  
  
  
She had also once expected to be dead, and what did she have now?  
  
  
The goal of keeping Harry alive was done, and somehow she had always expected there to be death at the end of it all. It was tricky allowing yourself to hope too much, look past the next day into an uncertain future. You needed to logically asses just the right amount of hope to keep you going, but balance it with cautious reason and smart instincts.  
  
  
Her brain had been in a constant state of thinking and processing and worrying and mulling for such a long time. Having nothing to worry her, nothing to think about now, it created a rift and an emptiness from which only numbness reached out.  
  
  
The studying for her N.E.W.T.s had helped, but that was over, and now with having the world open, new job possibilities at her feet, Hermione had no idea what to choose and what to do. Somewhere down that Horcrux road, her ability to survive overshadowed everything else.  
  
  
The war was over, yet inside her a battle still raged.  
  
  
Australia broke her, it was the final stop on that endless road.  
  
  
Her flight ticket to China and further portkey instructions pointing home glared at her from the paper in her hand. She took in a deep breath and wiped her tears away.  
  
  
She made a decision.  
  
  
Instead of at the paper, she stared out at the ocean for hours and hours, wondering if one of the planes in the sky had been hers. Back at her hotel, she had a backpack and she had maps, hiking boots, some savings and a tattered old fishing hat that had belonged to her dad. Somehow, all that and the beckoning world would have to be enough for a while.  
  


* * *

  
  
The letter stood open at the table, scribbled briefly and with a shaking hand. And Ron’s heart was empty and full of loss at the same time.  
  
  
She wasn’t coming back.  
  
  
Even when Death had hounded them, following in their wake for almost a full year, even then she didn’t feel as far away as she did now.  
  
  
He rubbed his eyes in the emptiness of the kitchen and his lungs quaked as he breathed in and breathed out.  
  
  
He didn’t know what to feel. A twisted mixture of anger and understanding threatened to drown him. A part of him understood that need for distance, the same part that still refused to talk about Fred, the part that made him seek the grave out on his own sometimes late at night, and speak out all the things he had never thought to say before.  
  
  
And who was the anger for? For her for leaving? For him for not being enough? For scaring her with his words of love and a future far off?  
  
  
Maybe it was all of that.  
  
  
He lay in bed later that night, propped against the headboard, quill in his teeth, dripping ink.  
  
  
How does one word an endless longing but also the understanding of the other person’s need for space? How do you phrase ‘ _I love you I want you I beg you come back to me but I will wait_ ’?  
  
  
Ron sighed and rubbed his forehead, ran a hand through his hair, ink smearing with the red. Another ball of crumpled paper was tossed on the floor.  
  
  
Maybe other men possessed this knowledge, of weaving words to represent their heart and mind in eloquent ways, but Ron was not one of them.  
  
  
And so the muddled state of his mind only resulted in a deep dark smudge on the pillow, a sad reminder of the girl who used to sleep there, while all the parchment remained blank.  
  


* * *

  
  
She rode bicycles instead of broomsticks and moved from place to place with a backpack only full of what originally fit inside. She walked everywhere, forgoing the pop and grab of Apparation. The constant walking fired up her legs and bones, bringing some semblance of life to her. Her wand was usually left behind, locked away in a box at whatever hostel she was staying at. She fell into some reckless overdrive, daring the universe to attack her, but on the dirt roads and the boats, on buses and overnight trains, anonymity protected her.  
  
  
Sometimes she still felt like she was on the run, travelling on a ticket that has long expired, travelling on borrowed time.  
  
  
But in movement there was a blessing, and the constant motion of this life soothed her tired soul and dulled all the aches in her heart.  
  
  
The smells of famous cities and unnamed towns, horizons of diverse shapes and living under foreign skies, brought to her a sense of peace. It was the perfect illusion of going forward even if she was stuck.  
  
  
Every evening she would fall into bed tired but full of different impressions, with dirty feet and stars in her eyes.  
  
  
She found a new appreciation for the beauty of the world. The breath-taking landscapes and seas of different shade filled her with a sense of wonder instead of fear.  
  
  
When on the run, each green hill, haunting moor and windswept cliff they stayed on had been a possible death trap. She had learned to live with a necessary dose of fear, every place of the beautiful landscape they had passed through only ever flooded her with anxiety.  
  
  
The sunsets had been scary as the darkness settled in, and the sunrises exhausting. After the war, the fear had lingered, and only now it was slowly rusting and peeling away.  
  
  
The world still wasn’t safe, it would never be clean, but it was no longer up to her and a few others to save. Not right in this moment anyway.  
  
  
For the first time, Hermione felt the bitter tang of cowardice. A withered seed smothered for so long by the ruthless bravery she carefully tended to over the years in order to survive, sprouting.  
  
  
She stood on a bridge over a river somewhere in the world, where no one knew her, with birds circling overhead, and she thought of a life of an ordinary woman.  
  
  
It wasn’t the first time, either. After her fifth year and the serious dark magic injuries she sustained at the Ministry, her parents seriously considered taking her out of Hogwarts. She had rowed and rowed with them about it, spreading the divide between them, tainting whatever little time they had left together, failing and refusing to understand how much they had rightfully worried about her.  
  
  
Now was the first time she allowed herself to consider it.  
  
  
Before, the Muggle world and life had always represented a restriction to her freedom, to who she really was and what had always been at her core – magic.  
  
  
In her current state, however, it all twisted and turned around, and maybe there was freedom in this endless travelling, nameless and alone, free to be whoever.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Backpacking?” Ron asked after taking another swig of beer, glaring into Bill’s scarred face. His older brother was smirking at him, having so much more experience in that real life shit, always passing out knowledge and advice about life, about growing and loving and fucking. All Ron knew was how not to die.  
  
  
George was with them, slightly inebriated already. “I always new Hermione had a wild streak in her,” he said with a laugh that Ron didn’t find very entertaining.  
  
  
“It’s what people do,” Bill continued, “young Muggles mostly. Wizards too, sometimes. When they want adventure...they just pack some stuff into a bag and travel, city to city, country to country. It’s an amazing experience.”  
  
  
“It sounds like a hassle and not at all comfortable.”  
  
  
“It’s not about comfort, it’s about living, not knowing where you’ll end up. It’s a feeling you can’t really duplicate. You gotta understand, Ron,” Bill said, leaning his elbows on the table and looking sincerely at his brother, “there’s something about travel that gets you...once you step on that road, it’s hard to step back. You experience things differently, your mind opens and grows. Maybe this is what she needs.”  
  
  
“But we’ve been travelling non-stop for the last year! Every day and on the run, constantly in danger, why can’t she just stand still?”  
  
  
“Maybe that’s what it is, she can’t,” George said, slurring his words a little bit. He had drunk at a much faster pace than the two of them.  
  
  
“When I came back from Egypt,” Bill began, “I missed it every day. The way the morning always smelt different and how the heat followed you everywhere, and the everyday hurricane of sounds all around, and dust in your eyes, and every day was a whole different experience. There are many cities like Cairo out there, alive and vibrant, and yet no city is the same.”  
  
  
Ron shook his head and failed to see how all that which Bill described could be pleasant or helpful to someone who was suffering from trauma.  
  
  
“I just wish she would’ve wanted me to do it with her,” he said dejectedly.  
  
  
“Doing it alone has a certain appeal to it. There’s some things you can’t do in a pair.”  
  
  
George snorted into his beer, letting out a strangled sound torn between mirthless laughter and a cry. Bill winced and clapped a soft hand on George’s shoulder, while Ron himself was sobered up by the sudden increase of pain spreading through his insides.  
  
  
No more words were said that night.  
  


* * *

  
  
The solitude was sweet, but eventually there came certain moments and sights she regretted not being able to share with someone.  
  
  
She missed home, her books, the Weasleys, Harry and...Ron.  
  
  
She never really figured out what to do about Ron and the inconceivable love she had felt for him. Despite the comfort he had brought her, and the refuge she had found in his arms, something about it all suddenly scared her.  
  
  
But oh how she missed him.  
  
  
She missed his hands on her and in her, the weight of his body on her, the motion of it behind her, under her, the new levels of passion he had unlocked within her. She missed his laughter and jokes and glances that had only ever been just for her.  
  
  
Every day she thought of writing to him, the letters worded in her head while she was out walking, but by the time she got back to wherever she was staying, there was nothing, nothing in her head she could say or write.  
  
  
Some nights she’d roam with her hands over her own body, imagining them to be his, and then she lay awake until the light and heat of the morning, with his name upon her lips, only breathed, never spoken out loud, for she was not yet ready to be found.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Ron looked out the window of the empty room and felt insane. He felt the weight of the deluminator always there, ready in his pocket, but it didn’t stir and released no guiding light.  
  
  
She had been gone for two months now, but reminders of her were still everywhere. Even after he had deep cleaned the whole place, he kept finding her hair and hairpins stuck under carpets and clinging to pillows and it was crazy how a hairpin could produce so much anguish in his mind.  
  
  
He was holding in his hands a book that he wished no one would ever see him holding.  
  
  
 _How to Get Over That One Wizard That Flew Away_. Ridiculous, but it would do. He found the incantation with the description - _banish their remains_.  
  
  
 _Grim_ , he thought. He raised his wand and waved it in a dramatic fashion and the room came alive with movement, and it was more than he had ever expected.  
  
  
There were hair bands flying into the box and scattered pieces of parchment that were in the under-bed depths where his deep cleaning hadn’t reached. Quills fluttered through the air like birds, dissolving into feathers falling at his feet. A sock with clovers on it, a pair of knickers, clean from the bottom of the drawer, a scarf and pencils, so many pencils. The box was full and he couldn’t look at it.  
  
  
He walked out of the room without a word, tossing the book in the trash. He meant to ask Harry to take the box and dispose of it. When he found Harry drinking coffee and reading the paper in the kitchen, he realized he couldn’t bring himself to do it.  
  
  
Harry gave him a questioning look, but Ron turned around and marched back into the room. He shrunk the box and put it in the back of his closet. Out of sight, out of mind, never out of heart, but he would just have to roll with the punches.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
At first she tried to avoid talking to people. She still preferred to travel alone, but sometimes when solitude shifted into loneliness, and thoughts she wasn’t ready for flooded her mind, she allowed herself to be engaged in conversation, sometimes taken out.  
  
  
The talks with people from such different walks of life, other travellers and locals, offered up a new world to her she could fold and escape into. It was almost odd to her how no one talked of death and dark magic and freshly sustained losses all around.  
  
  
She became aware of the strangeness and charm, a certain mysterious air, she exuded, and it attracted all sorts of people – those who thought they could discover the world merely by drinking foreign beers, those interested in her dreams and in her lips, those who had shallow advice and experiences falling through their sleeves, those with quiet eyes and open hearts that reached out to her with kindness, asking for nothing back.  
  
  
They were all sorts of people, sweet, good and bad, but they were people whose faces blended into blurs eventually, when only one face remained on her mind.  
  
  
At a party somewhere by the sea, where she dragged herself based on an impulse which started as a need for company and ended up tasting of isolation, she stood and stared at the moon. The music was everywhere, but it couldn’t penetrate her mind, couldn’t get to her at all.  
  
  
She could only watch people from afar, watch them dancing – happy, high, alone or embracing. So many bodies swirled to the rhythm and sound of the music, the heat of them mixing with the salty fresh air of the sea. The dazzling lights made her light-headed and she felt like she couldn’t suddenly breathe. She was terrified and lonely and horny and so desperately sad.  
  
  
Hermione closed her eyes and something within her snapped into opening.  
  
  
She called Ron’s name, softly at first, and then again through a choked sob.  
  
  
Brief moments tasting of eternity later he appeared, stepping out of a cloud of silver light, like a bloody prince, a ghost, a lover, a damn knight in literal shining armour.  
  
  
“Hermione,” he breathed out, his voice deep and yet delicate, tasting and testing that name on his tongue after such a long time. And she, hearing it leave his lips, almost lost her footing on the ground.  
  
  
He looked somehow older and had grown a beard. He was dressed in a warm jacket soaked with rain, his hair wet.  
  
  
She stared at him and couldn’t look at him enough. She loved his eyes and the new beard and the freckles like raindrops on his skin. She wondered in a daze if there were freckles on him from within, sprinkled on his soul like stars.  
  
  
His look held a world of emotion as he took a tentative step toward her. He seemed to be in the same barely-believe-I’m-seeing-you state as she was.  
  
  
“Sorry,” she croaked, hating herself for disrupting his life, but endlessly relieved he made it, dying in that moment to fall back into his arms.  
  
  
“What’s wrong?” he asked, for the first time looking at his surroundings, puzzled by the sea and by the party sound. “Are you alright?”  
  
  
She nodded and wiped away an escaped tear. Quick words passed between them and the shock and worry ebbed away.  
  
  
They both moved to the other, the earth as if finally shifting and tilting them in the forgotten direction of each other.  
  
  
The music finally reached them and filled their ears, and they swayed on the spot, awkward at first, softly laughing. With his body so close, Hermione lifted her head up to kiss him, and she kissed him hard and passionate, pouring all the built up longing in.  
  
  
Ron responded without hesitation, his tongue exploring her mouth, his hands blending with her skin. He held onto her tightly, afraid to let go. Out there by the sea, transported by a voice and a light, he was still half convinced this had to be a dream.  
  
  
Hermione pushed up more against him with her hips, and the reaction of him getting hard was there instantly. The tingling from her stomach erupted to all her nerve endings. It rippled in her fingertips, pierced through her skin, and only then she realized how badly she wanted him.  
  
  
She broke apart and briefly looked into his dizzy eyes, glazed with love and desire and with lust.  
  
  
She grabbed the belt on his trousers, tugging to unbuckle it. Ron’s breath hitched as she put a hand down his trousers, and he was kissing her again, stumbling somewhere in the dark, further away from the sand and the crowd, where the music was just an echo to the deafening drumbeat of his heart.  
  
  
The next morning, in the sea breeze and in daylight, they woke up in the grass, stood up and dusted themselves off.  
  
  
“Where are we exactly?” Ron asked, trying to sound casual as he looked around.  
  
  
“Somewhere in Greece.”  
  
  
“Okay, I can easily Apparate us back.”  
  
  
Hermione froze for only a second. “I’m not coming back.”  
  
  
An uncomfortable silence followed between them. Hermione hated this moment they were in now, the broken shadow settling in Ron’s eyes. She thought of how easy it would have been, to only take his hand and be transported.  
  
  
“I can’t, I’m not ready.”  
  
  
She felt like the ocean she was hearing, ebbing in and out, crashing onto the shore and then receding, and constantly storming within.  
  
  
“Hermione, we’re all dealing with this post-war shit, and you shouldn’t be dealing with it all alone, travelling the way you do,” Ron said with a hint of impatience to his voice. “Where’s your wand even?” he asked, looking her up and down, noticing she had no pockets in which there could be a wand, no bag to carry it, nothing, just a bracelet with a key on it and the clothes that she already had. “You don’t carry it,” he said worriedly. “That’s so dangerous.”  
  
  
“I’m in the Muggle world.”  
  
  
“There are still Death Eaters out there, don’t be stupid, that’s not like you.”  
  
  
“I’m sure the Death Eaters have much different things on their mind than chasing me down. I know what I’m doing, Ron.”  
  
  
“No, I don’t think you do. I don’t think you realize at all what you’re doing to yourself, to me, to everyone else back home who is worried sick about you.”  
  
  
“Stop it Ron,” she cried angrily, eyes brimming with tears now. “I need to do this. Just let me.”  
  
  
Ron paced back and forth, trying to form words of any kind, but still coming up short. She stood on the spot so defiantly not even a storm could move her, that much he knew.  
  
  
“So you’re not coming back?” he said, desperately trying to keep his voice from breaking.  
  
  
“I’m not coming back. Not yet.”  
  
  
Ron stared at her incredulously, his anger snapping, growing wild. He wanted to grab her hand and drag her home, making her see sense, but he’d never do that, he couldn’t.  
  
  
“When?”  
  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
  
“Well,” he inhaled and released a long sigh. “You always know how to call.”  
  
  
He Apparated away and there was no other sound besides the roar of the tide.  
  
  
Some days have passed and Hermione kept on going, Ron’s touch now tattooed on her skin as she couldn’t drive away the thought of him.  
  
  
Now that she was back in Europe, and home started slowly calling, she rented a car and decided to drive the rest of the way. Even though she was a witch, her parents had still insisted she learn and retain some useful Muggle skills, like properly driving a car.  
  
  
She drove for a couple of nights and days, and the only thing to fill out the silence was the hot air swishing by. In Athens she bought a cassette tape of Fleetwood Mac, her mother’s favourite band, and listened to Stevie Nicks on the road, crying and singing along, driving forward and driving all the sadness out.  
  
  
And finally it felt like it had begun to work, like the poison of isolation and fear and of loneliness trickled away as she drove on, the wind and curls in her face.  
  
  
She was shocked to discover that while she had always hated flying, there was something to driving a car. It calmed her down and she felt like she could go to the end of the world, set a course away from all the distant wars in her mind. The only time she stopped was for gas and sleep.  
  
  
As she drove up the Greek coast, she reached a point from where the sea was still visible, so blue it almost blended with the sky. According to her maps, this was the last view of the sea before she’d venture inland.  
  
  
Stopping at the lookout point, she got out of the car and looked out at the open sea. It had been five months since she had been looking out at the ocean back in Australia. She tried to gage how she felt. Could she really dare to believe she was better? Ready? Was it all worth it? She wasn’t sure, but the path of healing was sometimes a crooked one.  
  
  
The blue of the sea reminded her of Ron’s eyes. The car reminded her of Ron, too. With a soft smile, she thought of him without restraint this time, and tried to imagine if he could drive a Muggle car without flying and crashing it into a tree.  
  
  
Courage poured back into her in that moment, and suddenly she thought, there was only one way to find out.  
  
  
“Ron,” she tried quietly, repeating it two more times afterwards. Again moments passed but then a pale light appeared next to her, and from within its fold Ron stepped out.  
  
  
“You’re alright?” he asked in alarm, looking all around him again.  
  
  
“I’m fine, really,”  
  
  
“Well good. So, what-”  
  
  
“I need to tell you something,” she said quickly, heartbeat quickening. Seeing him again reminded her of how he had disappeared the last time, and how things stayed unresolved. Her mind was reeling fast through all the things which had scared her, the things eating away at her for the past months, and how she had no strength to face them, until now.  
  
  
“I felt so empty, I didn’t know how to explain it. And I loved every minute in your arms, I really did, but then...something in me snapped, and I woke up every morning feeling like I cannot feel. I didn’t know what to do with myself, with my life, with us. I thought of my parents all the time, of how I damned them to a fake life without their kid, only to discover they were happier without me!”  
  
  
The tears were spilling unrestrained now, her soul coming undone. Ron was silent, but he was listening more than ever.  
  
  
“Being away and alone was the only thing that made sense. I knew I should’ve come back, but the thought of it...just...impossible at that time, not knowing who I even was. And before I left, you said all those things! About marriage and family and future and it terrified me!”  
  
  
Ron stared at her, pale and freckled, his ears going red under the bright sun.  
  
  
“Well, yes, I did say something like that.” He struggled to keep his voice steady. “It’s kind of what I want, and I wouldn’t like to lie and pretend otherwise, but damn Hermione...none of that has to be a thing right now! I never meant you had to do anything. I never wanted you to feel like I’m entrapping you or something.”  
  
  
“Good!” she retorted, “because I still don’t know what I’m going to do, and how...how to properly even be alive.”  
  
  
“Okay, fine,” he said softly. There was a resignation to his tone, but not of the defeated kind. She felt that perhaps he had finally understood.  
  
  
“Look, I get it okay?” Ron continued after a while. “I swear I’ve thought about this every day ever since you left, and I see it now. You want to be free. And I get that you didn’t feel free for a long time, none of us did in those last few years with Voldemort fucking everything up. I remember you being so stressed all the time. And after, well,” Ron ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He then put his hands in his pockets and turned to look out to the horizon. “Dealing with all that aftermath, all the shit and the grief, it was too much. But Hermione,” he turned to look at her, and it was perhaps the most sincere look he’s ever given her, “I would not have you if even for a second you didn’t feel free with me.”  
  
  
Hermione stared at him as those words settled. Her mind was clearing, some darkness that was choking her falling away.  
  
  
“I tried it, you know?” he said after a while, breaking the silence. “Packbacking or whatever?” he suggested helpfully when Hermione raised a questioning eyebrow. “Bill told me all about it, so in between Auror trainings I would go for these small trips, like you. But I couldn’t really do it your Muggle way, so I did it on a broom. I call it broompacking!” he exclaimed and looked extremely proud. “It’s not the most comfortable, I mean the buttocks don’t thank you, but I liked how differently the cities were built when I flew over them, and just being somewhere out there alone helped calm me down. I just want to say that if you like this travelling thing, I could...join you sometimes, if you wanted me to.”  
  
  
Hermione felt like crying for some reason, but pushed the sobs down and managed a smile, which was just as genuine.  
  
  
“Would you like to go for a drive with me now?” she asked, almost shyly.  
  
  
Ron seemed to notice the car for the first time, and he looked at it with interest in his eyes.  
  
  
“Where are we going?”  
  
  
“We just follow the road, but eventually, home.”  
  
  
Ron sucked in a breath and held it there, keeping the moment of those words close to his heart, in case he hadn’t heard correctly, in case she would change her mind.  
  
  
“Any chance the car can fly?”  
  
  
“No chance, but if you want I can give you some driving lessons.”  
  
  
“We can give it a try, though with you as my instructor,” he said, looking at her more closely, eyes lingering on her bare brown legs, “it might be difficult to keep my eyes on the road.”  
  
  
A simple compliment from him and Hermione felt the heat in her cheeks rise.  
  
  
Hermione turned to look at the sparkling sea one last time, whispering a goodbye. There was a certain pain losing it from sight as she turned around. But another beautiful sight met her eyes.  
  
  
Ron was leaning against the car, watching her eagerly with crossed arms. He was still so tall but the lankiness was not there any more, his shoulders were broad and there was an outline of muscles underneath the fabric of his shirt. It began to dawn on her how they were no longer children playing at war. He wanted to be more than the boy with all the insecurities, and she didn’t want to be the girl that was forever on the run.  
  
  
She walked slowly and made to go around to the other side of the car, but Ron reached out and grabbed her hand softly. His thumb stroked the inside of her wrist as their fingers interlaced. He pulled her close, bending his head to rest his forehead against hers.  
  
  
"I've missed you so much."

“I’m sorry I left you,” she said.  
  
  
Ron’s other hand travelled to brush her cheek and into her hair. The feel of his fingertips on her face sent shivers down her neck.  
  
  
“I hated every minute of it,” he said hoarsely, “but it’s okay. We’re even now, I guess? I left you at a much worse time in the middle of the war. Sometimes we have messes inside only we alone can clean up.”  
  
  
“I want to help you with your mess from now on, if you can help me with mine.”  
  
  
“That sounds fair.”  
  
  
He hugged her before he kissed her, held her close to his chest as she breathed him in. When his lips were on hers again, it felt like the sweetest forever.  
  
  
They got in the car then and Hermione drove. They talked for hours without stopping. Hermione told him of all the places she’s seen, Ron caught her up on everything that’s happened back home.  
  
  
The cities on signs and exits passed them by, and the road aligned with the sky. Later that day, on an empty side road, Ron tried to drive again, and he was breathless with laughter, feeling like that little young boy again, only he was older now, sitting beside a woman he loved, and she was grinning at him the entire time.  
  
  
Nights they spent in small hotels on the road. No longer feeling lost, just she lost in him, he lost in her. And out there, far away from home, they found a home in each other, and belonged.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Ron slept on the passenger seat, the passing lights illuminating his face as Hermione drove them through the tunnel under the English channel. Miles of road stretched behind them, and with home so close, Hermione began to feel nervous again.  
  
  
But she also felt ready. She felt once more the allure of a challenge in front of her. The wilderness in her was quiet now, no longer haunting. She was making plans and lists in her head again, of all the things she was excited to do once back home. Even if a piece of her heart had remained somewhere out there, she was eager to be going back.  
  
  
Hours later in the morning, green rolling hills lit up by the rising sun greeted her. She realized that despite all the places she has seen, there was nowhere were the hills had quite such lovely shade of green.  
  
  
Ron stirred awake next to her, stretching as far as the small car would let him. He rubbed his eyes and yawned in a way she found ridiculously endearing.  
  
  
“Morning,” he mumbled and smiled at her with sleepy eyes. The sun shone through the window through his hair. He leaned over and kissed her briefly on the cheek.  
  
  
They were close now.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
It was an odd feeling, coming home after so long. First footsteps through the empty house felt hollow and were all too loud. She set down her backpack and spun around in the room, feeling almost as tired as the day after the battle.  
  
  
Ron walked through the door and hugged her from behind.  
  
  
“How do you feel?” he asked carefully.  
  
  
She turned around and stood on tiptoe to press her forehead against his. A part of her missed the car, and the small world they found in there. Perhaps she’d forever miss walking alone under the open sky, looking out at seas and finding new roads to take. But the freedom...it wasn’t missing, she still felt that. The running was over.  
  
  
“I love you,” she said, meaning it more than ever. “And it’s good to be home,” she added, hoping he knew the words didn’t refer to the room and house they were in. They referred to him.  
  
  
After a shower and a meal and lots of laughs, Hermione and Ron went to sleep, lying in the soft fresh sheets, feeling as though they were lying down upon clouds.  
  
  
She was falling asleep with the sound of Ron’s breathing and the sea alive in her ears.  
  
  
If she was an ocean, he was the rock, and breaking over him was suddenly a fate she could take.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments and thoughts appreciated, thank you for reading


End file.
